Amber Boyer News

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Thus, we are happy to present one of our most popular features: The Nashville Theater Calendar, a comprehensive - maybe even exhaustive (lord knows we're exhausted from putting it together, gathering all the info from all over the interwebs!) - listing of theatrical openings for the 2015/16 season. We'll update the calendar every Monday, clearing out the shows that have closed and adding additional information on the shows still to come

Thus, we are happy to present one of our most popular features: The Nashville Theater Calendar, a comprehensive - maybe even exhaustive (lord knows we're exhausted from putting it together, gathering all the info from all over the interwebs!) - listing of theatrical openings for the 2016 season. We'll update the calendar every Monday, clearing out the shows that have closed and adding additional information on the shows still to come.

LaToya Gardner adds yet another theatrical conquest to her already impressive resume: Sister Mary Clarence/Deloris Van Cartier in Sister Act, the musical theater version of the Whoopi Goldberg film that has delighted audiences since its debut in 1992, inspiring one sequel (with maybe another on the way) in the process.

Theatrical surprises and sneak previews of upcoming productions of veteran director Tim Larson's Sister Act, from Nashville's Circle Players - Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater organization - and Center for the Arts' Dreamgirls, directed by 2012 Most Promising Actor Matthew Hayes Hunter, will highlight Sunday's Midwinter's First Night.

If you were to ask me to list my five favorite musicals (or even my top ten), there is a very good chance I would not include Meredith Willson's The Music Man among my chosen favorites. But then I see another production of that particular Willson tribute to Americana that features a fast-talking salesman and a beautiful young librarian named Marian and I am suddenly reminded that I absolutely adore The Music Man and all 76 of its trombones - and I feel remiss in not listing it among the shows I love.

Celebrating its 65th season, Nashville's Circle Players is Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater organization and I can think of no better way to celebrate that milestone than with the company's current show, the Tim Larson-directed version of Ragtime, the musical adaptation of the acclaimed E.L. Doctorow novel.

Today, in our latest installment of Nashville Theater 101, we introduce three more members of our wildly divergent, almost prototypically dysfunctional theater family: Justin Boyd, Amber Boyer and Maryanna Clarke.

Norma Desmond sings about them "out there in the dark" in Sunset Boulevard, Lauren Bacall dealt with a particularly sinister and deranged one in her 1981 film The Fan, and virtually everyone you know who had taken to the stage in a show anywhere around the world can regale you with stories about their wild and woolly antics. "They," of course, are the fans, the audiences, the people for whom theater is presented every night.

Circle Players, one of the first resident companies at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, makes a triumphant return to that cultural edifice in downtown Nashville to mount its latest revival of Titanic the Musical just in time to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking in the frigid waters of the north Atlantic.

There is a huge difference between unbridled enthusiasm and the completely undisciplined free-for-all on display in Encore Theatre Company's production of Philip King's classic stage comedy See How They Run. Clearly, the cast's overzealous approach to the show was warmly received by a large part of the audience (many of whom leapt to their feet at curtain to give the actors an ovation), but there is no doubt many people left the theater, scratching their heads and wondering, 'what the hell was that all about?'

David Williams and Cat Eberwine give such winning performances as Seymour and Audrey in the Senior Center for the Arts' production of Little Shop of Horrors, now onstage at Nashville Dinner Theatre through November 15, that it's easy to overlook some of the production's other, more obvious, shortcomings. Williams and Eberwine are sublimely off-kilter as the oddest of couples in the Alan Menken-Howard Ashman musical, with an onstage chemistry that makes them completely believable and altogether lovable in their cartoonish roles.

AUDREY II, the people-eating plant who stars in Little Shop Of Horrors, the frightfully freaky rock musical, has invaded Donelson's Senior Center for the Arts (SCA), for a run through November 15 at Nashville Dinner Theatre. Directed by veteran Nashville director Tim Larson, Little Shop introduces audiences to Seymour, an ill-fated florist shop worker who pines for fortune, fame and his flame, comely co-worker, Audrey. He later discovers an alien plant with a hankering for human blood and a dastardly desire to overtake the world. A perilous pact is made between the two, and mayhem ensues.

David Williams and Cat Eberwine give such winning performances as Seymour and Audrey in the Senior Center for the Arts' production of Little Shop of Horrors, now onstage at Nashville Dinner Theatre through November 15, that it's easy to overlook some of the production's other, more obvious, shortcomings. Williams and Eberwine are sublimely off-kilter as the oddest of couples in the Alan Menken-Howard Ashman musical, with an onstage chemistry that makes them completely believable and altogether lovable in their cartoonish roles.

AUDREY II, the people-eating plant who stars in Little Shop Of Horrors, the frightfully freaky rock musical, has invaded Donelson's Senior Center for the Arts (SCA), for a run through November 15 at Nashville Dinner Theatre. Directed by veteran Nashville director Tim Larson, Little Shop introduces audiences to Seymour, an ill-fated florist shop worker who pines for fortune, fame and his flame, comely co-worker, Audrey. He later discovers an alien plant with a hankering for human blood and a dastardly desire to overtake the world. A perilous pact is made between the two, and mayhem ensues.

ACT 1, one of Nashville's oldest community theatre groups, staged the Gilbert & Sullivan classic The Mikado as the first production of its 20th anniversary season. Running August 7-22, The Mikado was directed by Bob Fish, with music direction by Lee Druce, the cast featured Francine Berk, Whitney Rose Cone, Steven Luboniecki, Valerie Navarre, James Rudolph, Daniel Sadler, Vicki White, John Wilson, L.T. Kirk, Amber Boyer, Megan Hunt, Jamie Janiszewski, Brenda Jones, Tricia Musser, Becca Nelson, Andrew Drumheller, Jamie Helms, Josh Matthews, Danny Proctor and Daniel Vincent. The show was produced by Donald Powell, Jennifer Rybolt and Sue Stinemetz.

History tells us that London was caught up in some sort of Japanese fervor in 1885 when Gilbert and Sullivan debuted their newest comic opera, The Mikado or The Town of Titipu at the Savoy Theatre. And now, 124 years later, Nashville theatre-goers may find themselves in a similar state, thanks to a superior production of the entertaining work, which bows as the first show in the 20th anniversary season from ACT 1, one of Tennessee's best community theatre groups.